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Last night I had a vision
which caused me to awaken
from a long sleep
Where I was under a spell,
my mind in a fog.
Until then, I hardly remember how I got here,
in this little apartment with a job
and my yoga studio next door,
or where these poodles came from,
who sit warmly upon my lap,
or why I am writing a recipe for a lemon tart,
I don’t remember what happened –
It’s as if it wasn’t me.
But where had I been?
Then I recall my vision.
I’d been held captive on a train car,
wearing a beard,
in a man’s body,
with a witch who
threatened to free me.
I had surrounded myself with
severed heads of dead friends
who were my talismans,
meant to protect me from
the witch and her intentions.
She was after all, so hideous.
I mocked her, but she only sneered.
Then, quick as light, she stabbed me
with a long knife,
just to show that the skulls
didn’t work.
They weren’t alive,
but I was.
So I awoke.

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I was put together seven times.
in different shapes, sometimes square.
Once my head was on on upside down
(it explains so much).
In another, my hands were where
my feet ought to be and
my spine was bent like a racetrack.
Seven times I was assembled.
Seven wrong machinations.
But it only takes seven.
and then it’s done.
This is the last.
This is the coming.
This is rapegia.

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It was like a dream.
The sun and ceiling fans,
rotating steadily in the tall white rafters.
I can feel the sweat from the sea
that coated our skin and our souls,
the music that carried us
away from of our lives,
molding us into takers
of emptiness and anger.

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Music,
a quarter millennia old.
How did such time pass?
With lights and evergreens
and ruby wine to
stuff our heads.
There’s a clock
between the needles
of my tree
gold and ticking,
with ribboned skyscrapers
that were fiction
when this music
was first sung.

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The pill that tastes like mint
melts under my tongue,
and I am fearful
of what’s to come.

Nonetheless,
I close my eyes
and my lids flutter
as I dream
of impossible things
that are too real
to be fiction.

I hear the rumble
of granite boulders
rolling as lemmings
through a field of
yellow flowers,
wearing ugly smirks
that bring me
to my knees
as I watch a little girl
who is about to
be crushed.

I die on a rooftop
in a leather jacket
and black boots.
I wake on the same roof
in the snow
many years in the future.
Beyond the evergreen forest
and sloping hills,
is a frozen tsunami wave
cresting so high
it nearly touches the sun.

And then I awaken,
my eyes bleary
and head filled with dreams
of what dark worlds
may come.

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Lord Ganesha,
remover obstacles,
you sit near a draped window
in the sunlight.
where you drink the sky.
It’s where I put you,
but I thought you should know
I follow the Tao,
the wisdom of monks
and sages
to still my mind
and live in the present.
But I need you too, Ganesha.
Can you hold the door
to let them in?

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Frankie has bad dreams
of dark things that have no edges
like blackened shower nozzles
of mold and mildew;
a closet in an empty house
where someone sways;
tall windows with peeling paint
the color of old teeth,
chewing on memories
of a fury sunrise.

She wonders why
these things haunt her,
as she trembles in the
rings of my eyes.
Maybe she’s a
dreamcatcher
for nightmares,
the kind that lurk behind
closed doors in rooms
made by men in a hurry.

Perhaps Frankie sees mine,
and takes them away.
Beneath the ocean
she becomes a whale,
and carries my nightmares
to waters at the edge
of the Earth,
where no boats are allowed,
and whales rarely swim.

Maybe that is why
she wakes up crying.

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We wear funny hats
and shoes
at the paned window
as we look out across the lawn
in twilight’s spell.
This is your club
and your friends.
I am a guest,
the last one to choose
the shoes from in the trunk
that don’t match.
They’re the wrong
color,
and too big
for my feet.
The hat is felt
with soft lines that
sit on my head
like a lizard
curling on a rock
in the sun.
But there is only lamplight
at your party.
There’s also a record player
that skips.
I can feel your presence
behind me,
pausing in the doorway.
As I turn,
so do you,
and our gazes
never meet.
Why don’t you say anything?
You have always been
disappointing.

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MUSINGS

Upon the sides of Latmos was outspread
A mighty forest; for the moist earth fed
So plenteously all weed-hidden roots
Into o’er-hanging boughs, and precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,
Where no man went; and if from shepherd’s keep
A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every nightfall went.
-Endymion, John Keats